CBS News
Buckingham Palace’s East Wing opens for tours for the first time, and tickets sell out in a day
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London — The room that opens onto Buckingham Palace’s famous balcony, from which the royal family can be seen waving to the public below during major events, is opening to the public for tours for the first time this summer after a renovation.
Tour tickets, however, are no longer available. A limited number of “East Wing Highlights” summer tours that were offered this year sold out in one day. Standard adult tickets were priced at about $90 each, and they had to be purchased on top of the standard Buckingham Palace tour ticket, which costs about $50.
Visitors to the Centre Room, which leads out to the famous balcony, in the palace’s long closed-off East Wing will be able to see historic artifacts including 18th century imperial Silk wall hangings gifted by Emperor Guangxu of China to Queen Victoria to mark her Diamond Jubilee in 1897.
”This room was part of the edition of the East Wing, made by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. It was Prince Albert who actually suggested the balcony,” said Nicola Turner Inman, curator of decorative arts at Royal Collection Trust. “It was first used in 1851 for the waving off the troops for the Crimean War.”
Chris Jackson/Getty
The Royal Collection noted that Prince Albert suggested the balcony be placed on the front of the palace as a way for the royals to be “visible and connect with the public.”
People who join the tour will also walk past famous paintings as they make their way through the Principal Corridor, which leads to the Centre Room, and will see the recently restored 18th century Chinese hand-painted wallpaper in the Yellow Drawing Room.
”It’s one of our charitable aims to make the collection more widely and publicly accessible. But it’s also the wish of His Majesty the King, who is very much wanting to open up the Royal residences,” Inman said.
The East Wing is still used by the royal family for events and official meetings.
Jonathan Brady/PA Images/Getty
Inman said renovations of the East Wing were part of a wider “reservicing project,” a 10-year upgrade of the London palace’s services and amenities.
“At the start of the work in the East Wing in 2018, over 3,500 works of art and other objects were removed to enable the work to take place,” the Trust said.
It wasn’t immediately clear when, or if, future dates for the East Wing tour would be made available. The Royal Collection Trust said it would first review the trial period.
CBS News
The new middle-class retirement plan: Working into old age
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A new glimpse into how middle-class people in the U.S. think about retirement is revealing some startling views about how long they expect to live and to work.
About half of middle-income Americans who are currently employed say they expect to work past age 65, according to a study from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies and the Transamerica Institute. While many say that is their preference, roughly 8 in 10 also cite financial pressures, including a shortfall in savings as well as worries that Social Security won’t provide enough financial support.
Transamerica defines “middle class” — a broad sociological term rather than a strict financial measure of income — as people earning $50,000 to $200,000 annually, which accounts for roughly 55% of U.S. adults.
“Many are saving for retirement, but the question is whether they are saving enough,” Catherine Collinson, the CEO of Transamerica Institute, told CBS MoneyWatch.
The perils of living longer
Middle-class households have saved a median of $66,000 in their retirement accounts, she noted, citing the survey data. But, as it grows, that nest egg might not prove to be enough to fund a retirement based on a person’s current age and lifestyle. It’s also a far cry from the $1.5 million that the typical worker said they’d need to fund a comfortable retirement, according to a Northwestern Mutual study published earlier this year.
To be sure, the number of 401(k) millionaires — people with at least $1 million in their retirement accounts — has recently surged to a new record, thanks to gains in the stock market, according to new Fidelity data. But that reflects only about 500,000 accounts, a fraction of the roughly 160 million people in the U.S. labor force.
Meanwhile, many middle-class workers are envisioning retirements that could stretch to 25 years or more, given their expectation of living to a median age of 90. A longer retirement requires socking more money away to fund more years out of the workforce.
“Longer human lifespans are prompting people to reconsider their life course including their time spent in the workforce relative to retirement,” Collinson added. “Many envision working longer and retiring at an older age which affords them more time to earn income and save, while others may be planning to fund longer retirements.”
“Not really a retirement”
Working past 65 is increasingly common in the U.S., with about one in five people over that age — approximately 11 million Americans — still holding down a job, according to the Pew Research Center.
Some, like Larry and Joyce Gesick, who are 77 and 66, respectively, recently told CBS News they continue to work because of tight finances. “It’s not really a retirement,” Joyce told CBS News. “It’s working every day.”
Only about 10% of Americans between 62 and 70 are both retired and financially stable, according to noted retirement expert Teresa Ghilarducci, whose book “Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy” explores the financial pressures facing more Americans in retirement.
The reason, Ghilarducci says, is partly due to the current retirement system, which places the onus on workers to manage their own savings decisions through their 401(k)s and similar plans.
In an ideal world, these plans can work well for retirement planning. But, as Ghilarducci told CBS MoneyWatch earlier this year, it’s common for workers to experience job losses or financial stressors, disrupting their best intentions to put money away for retirement.
Even middle-class workers with access to 401(k)s aren’t always participating, with the Transamerica study finding that about 1 in 7 aren’t using their employer-sponsored plans.
And once workers have a 401(k), many are using the savings as a pre-retirement financial cushion, the analysis found. About one-third said they’d tapped their 401(k) or other retirement plan for a loan, early withdrawal or a hardship withdrawal, a share that Transamerica described as “concerning.” The top reasons for doing so were financial emergencies or paying off debt, the firm found.
Such withdrawals can sap the ability to save for a well-funded retirement and increases the risk of running short of money in old age.
Despite these challenges, about 7 in 10 middle-class Americans told Transamerica they’re confident they’ll be able to retire with a comfortable lifestyle. Many envision traveling, volunteering or taking care of grandkids once they’ve stepped back from work.
“The middle class has an upbeat vision about retirement as a time in life which brings opportunities for travel, spending time with family and friends, pursuing hobbies and more,” Collinson noted. “However, as a departure from long-standing notions, the middle class does not see retirement and work as being mutually exclusive.”
CBS News
These are the financial moves Americans regret the most
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More than three-quarters of Americans regret some of the financial moves they’ve made — or neglected to make — but two common missteps stand out as money matters people most wish they had handled differently.
The most common financial regret? Not saving for retirement early enough, according to a new Bankrate study. That jibes with other recent reports showing that many Americans nearing retirement consider themselves woefully unprepared to stop working in their golden years.
“It shows a very common sentiment — that people may not be as prepared for retirement as they feel they should be, or just regret that they would be in a more secure financial position if they had started earlier,” said Bankrate Chief Financial Analyst Greg McBride.
Overall, 22% of Americans said not saving for retirement early enough is their top financial regret. Older generations, who are closest to retirement, were more likely to cite not starting to save early enough as their biggest regret than younger generations.
“Regrets about not saving for retirement early enough loom larger the closer those golden years become,” McBride said. “We saw a very steady increase in those regrets with age,” he noted.
Five percent of Gen Zers said they regretted not saving for retirement early enough — a figure that increased to 14% for millennials, 26% for Gen Xers, and 37% for boomers, according to the Bankrate study.
The second most common financial regret relates to a far less predictable scenario than retirement: 18% of Americans said they regretted not socking away enough money to cover emergency expenses.
“Regret about emergency savings ranks really high every year, so it’s keeping with the American tradition of not being particularly good on the saving side,” McBride said.
How can I start saving sooner?
McBride offered tips for younger generations to make use of now, in order to avoid feeling regretful down the road.
He advised people to automatically make contributions to their retirement savings plans and emergency savings funds by contributing to a retirement savings account through payroll, and setting up a direct deposit of a portion of your paycheck into an emergency savings account.
“You can work toward both goals simultaneously,” he said. “Automating it means you’re paying yourself first, and you’ve automated both of those before you even roll out of bed in the morning.”
McBride also noted that inflation-driven high prices were the top contributor to Americans not saving enough for retirement and emergencies. Americans also cited their employment situation as a reason for their not being able to save as much as they’d like.
CBS News
California lawmakers pass bill to limit AI replicas
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